


sanctuary (in the warmth of her blood)

by ilia



Series: wax melted; i'd meet the sea [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, hubert ponders murder once, pining and admissions of love, thoughts about violence and blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:00:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilia/pseuds/ilia
Summary: Hubert and Edelgard travel a northern road after the war is won.-And despite it all, Hubert’s worries as they had approached the long journey of the road to Fhirdiad had melted away in a single happy day. What a gentle joy the road northward has been to them. The tinkling of Edelgard’s laugh accompanying his way, a fine delicacy Hubert cannot seem to rid from his thoughts. That they have spent their evenings in separate bedrooms and separate beds should not matter. It doesn’t. She grants Hubert the honor of her smiles directed his way. That is enough.He looks at Edelgard now. She, a steady, whole shape cutting through the cacophony of the northern storm. Snow catches and dances upon her shroud.He follows diligently behind as always, a sharp pride in his chest.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Series: wax melted; i'd meet the sea [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930351
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	sanctuary (in the warmth of her blood)

**Author's Note:**

> This work is part of my Edelbert series, Wax Melted, I'd Meet the Sea. You don't need to read the first to read this one, but they are intended to reside within the same universe.
> 
> I would like to thank my sweet, darling Max who believes in me relentlessly, god knows why.

The snow has begun to thicken by the time Hubert bids them stop.

For some hours now, he and Edelgard have traveled horseback in a countryside muted by the gentle falling of snow until the bleak nothing of the world presses in hard on Hubert’s ears. And still he has commanded the horses ever-forward, as the drifts accumulating along the horses’ trail heightens, as his fingers and nose and ears begin to ache from the chill. Uncomfortable they may be, but any time spent traveling now is time they need not spend tomorrow.

They still have a ways to go.

Their destination is the great city of Fhirdiad—or whatever Edelgard will name it now that it is no longer Faerghus but the expansive, deadened wastes of Northern Adrestia. Their hurry, the sanctuary of the city walls. To be outside those walls is not to be safe; Hubert is all too aware of this. A defeated country post-war makes for danger along the traveled paths for the Empress who had proclaimed her unconditional victory over the citizens. And so, traveling in inconspicuous duos is their best option.

The mare shifts and groans beneath Hubert’s aching legs as he bid them stop at a crossroads; he leans forward with a gloved hand to sweep away the snow amassed over the top of a signpost. With night closing in he is in search of shelter, no matter how unseemly, for his Empress.

The sound of Edelgard’s horse clops up behind him. There is a muted whinny as she bids it halt.

“My horse is trembling,” she tells him, brushing its flank. “I was beginning to wonder if you would ever allow us stop, Hubert, or if you were simply curious to see which of us four might freeze to death first.”

Hubert suppresses the hint of a grin as he scrutinizes the markings of the wooden post. “You seem to think yourself quite funny, my Lady.”

“I know it.” And she sounds satisfied, from what Hubert from hear; the laugh along her tone lilting as it travels to his ears. Hubert resits a glance Edelgard's way. He needn’t welcome any further distraction. Not here, right in the midst of enemy territory. When the very slip of Edelgard’s shroud to expose her silver hair might welcome an attack.

Hubert’s fingers clench uneasily at the thought. He may be well versed in the art of Reason, in various dark magics he has gleaned from the older, more gruesome texts unearthed in his considerable time researching his craft. But still, he and Edelgard are only two. They have no way to know who or what awaits them, hidden in wait in the Faerghan snowdrifts.

“We will cut away here,” he tells her instead. “There is an inn at the end of this road.”

She nods in acknowledgement and takes the lead.

Edelgard is clad in something unassuming. Her shroud is monochromatic and pulls tight about her face and little shoulders. Her woolen skirts fall in a neat line over the horse’s rear. She is the picture of a lady of the North—all excluding her sharp, purple eyes.

Oh, but how Hubert knows her not to be so. He understands Edelgard to be a warrior of terrifying capability, her hands to be calloused and scarred and to have known so intimately the handle of her axe and the hot blood of her adversaries. To see her appear so unassuming and fragile tugs at something deep in his throat. Goddess, but how long has it been since he’s had the pleasure to witness Edelgard free of her armor?

Too long, since the Empress and her Minister have spared the effort for the sake of anything more casual. Rebellions in the north and increasing attempts against Lady Edelgard’s life have seen to that. For months now, they have hardly shared a word not about the work upon their plates. And oh, how that mountain has only heightened—

Too long, since Hubert has had the pleasure of feeling for himself the silken quality of her hair, too long since she had requested he spend a night entwined with her in her own bed. And long as Hubert might to right that wrong, it is not his place. He tells himself she has the right to be exhausted—or to have lost interest in her pursuit of his affections. Any decision Edelgard makes would be well befitting her. Hope as he might, he was never intended for any permanence at her side.

Hubert nudges his horse to trod a little more rapidly as the tavern lights greet them through the amassing snowfall.

And despite it all, Hubert’s worries as they had approached the long journey of the road to Fhirdiad had melted away in a single happy day. What a gentle joy the road northward has been to them. The tinkling of Edelgard’s laugh accompanying his way, a fine delicacy Hubert cannot seem to rid from his thoughts. That they have spent their evenings in separate bedrooms and separate beds should not matter. It doesn’t. She grants Hubert the honor of her smiles directed his way. That is enough.

He looks at Edelgard now. She, a steady, whole shape cutting through the cacophony of the northern storm. Snow catches and dances upon her shroud.

He follows diligently behind as always, a sharp pride in his chest.

❧

The inn consists of two humble floors with stables attached; the stables are full when they enter and stink of dry, fresh hay. They dismount their steeds, and Hubert looks pointedly away as Edelgard rubs feeling back into her thighs. That he remember every curve of those legs beneath her clothing is of no concern to the Empress. That he thinks of her now laid out upon the satin bedsheets of her royal quarters, a shame to his name of Minister.

“Finally,” he groans instead as they are encircled by the heat of horses and his riding boots are planted firmly upon the ground. “To be on my own two feet again is no small mercy.”

“You don’t enjoy your days spent journeying with me, Hubert? A grin tints Edelgard’s words.

“That is not what I meant, and you know it."

“Do I?”

“It has been a pleasant road,” Hubert concedes, straightening his gloves in a dismissive motion as she watches him. “If one favors murder waiting around each corner.”

“So you’ve found yourself quite enjoying it then,” she returns, and smiles.

“That—“ Hubert stutters. “Is neither here nor there.”

The stables are warm with the rich promise of security that seeps into his coat. Their horses shift, and they are pressed together just _so_ , Edelgard’s warm smile and the uneasy heart in Hubert’s cheeks as their beasts adjust. 

She reaches out and takes his hand.

Through the leather of their insulated gloves, he thinks he can still feel her heat. Hubert keeps his hand perfectly still as Edelgard's fingers dance across it. Perhaps his barren expression will not give away the roaring within the hollow of his chest. Oh, how she can shift his assumptions with a singular, coveted touch. How she can reach into the deadened hollow of his chest and bring blood flowing back to his worthless heart.

“Yes?” He asks, brows lifting, inquisitive, as his insides are positively _pummeled_ with sensation.

From the tight enclave of her hood, a rebellious few hints of silver hair have come away. Edelgard opens her mouth, eyes sparkling—she has thought of a rebuttal.

A clamor behind them indicates the stablehand is coming their way; Edelgard releases Hubert before the boy comes into view. Hubert closes and opens his fingers in an uneasy motion, adjusting to the sudden sensation of emptiness.

“Later,” he promises her, and presses towards Edelgard before he can talk himself from it. His fingers ease the silver hairs until they are hidden beneath her shroud once more. They dance down the line of her cheek, uneasy at the notion of pulling away. One last hungry sweep of her face before he turns heel to find the stablehand.

“You can’t get away from me so easily, von Vestra,” Edelgard calls after him. Hubert does not allow her the satisfaction of his grin.

❧

The inn is full when Hubert and Edelgard enter, the season’s unnatural early chill enticing the homeless and wanderers alike into her warm belly. The stink of liquor wafts from the dining hall, a jaunty northern tune quick on its heels. Hubert strides forward, pleased at the feeling of Edelgard tight at his side. In an establishment of such questionable origin their proximity assures an additional safety.

To the strangers they meet along the road, Hubert and Edelgard make the shape of a traveling husband and wife, innocuous. The tavern’s residents do not know that beneath Edelgard’s hood is the distinctive, argentine hair of their crowned Empress, much as they do not know that underneath Hubert’s fine gloves rest fingers scarred and blackened with the wicked aftereffects of spells fearsome enough to rip a man’s spine from the meat of his back. They do not know their lives to be in peril; that at the barest hint of danger towards his Queen Hubert would gladly level the whole damned inn, the countryside to boot. They continue to drink and laugh and chatter, clueless to the duo that has just entered their midst. The better for it.

“Two rooms,” Hubert requests upon approach of the entry desk, and sets down precisely enough gold for both. It is a fair number, he has discerned; not grandiose enough for the inkeeps to begin to wonder just what other riches Hubert keeps beneath his cloak.

The inkeep shakes her head. “We’re full up tonight—storm brings ‘em all in. We’ve one remaining. Take it or leave it.”

Hubert glances Edelgard’s way, her face naught but an inscrutable mask. He turns back to the inkeep and resists inquiring how much gold he might need to pile into her greedy hands for a second to miraculously become available.

“That will do."

They turn away as the song quickens; the pounding of feet upon cheap wooden floorboards indicates a dance has sprung.

❧

“Lure a man outside with the promise of gold. Do away with him rapidly. Shove his corpse into a drift to freeze, not to be discovered until spring.”

“For the last time, we are not killing erroneously just for a second room.” Edelgard’s fingers line the heavy grain of the table. They trace the circular shape of a knot in the wood; discerning, appreciative. Her nail is clean, her hand gentle. Those thick callouses that line her joints do not mar the hands of a lady. No, they simply make her more of one.

The dining hall is filthy; six boisterous tables line the walls, in the center a cauldron of stew and block of bread sit for all to enjoy. But the rum is sweet and the slop will do, and Hubert is not keen to retreat upstairs to the close quarters of their singular room just yet. And so they had opted to sit amongst the many within the dining hall, to ascertain a corner for themselves. When they sit across the table from one another, they can watch each other’s backs for attack.

“You fail to understand,” Hubert objects to Edelgard once more. One final attempt at distance before the urge to quiet himself and spend the evening that much closer to her wins out.

“And you seem desperate for your solitude,” Edelgard counters, eyes sweeping the ceiling as she rolls them. “Really Hubert, if I had thought you so tired of me, perhaps I should have requested my trek accompanied by the likes of Ferdinand instead—“

“Do not,” Hubert snaps. “Liken me to the likes of von Aegir.”

“A handsome man, too,” Edelgard continues, tongue sharp. “A fine false husband he would make this chilly night."

Hubert convulses, fingers tight about his cup. Edelgard’s laugh rings out once more.

Despite it all, her smile heats his core more than his last mouthful of the saccharine drink. Hubert returns it in a cursory action and raises his mug to his mouth. Anything to quell that effect Edelgard’s lips have upon his traitorous heart.

Oh, how sonorous his affections have become.

The dance is taken to the tabletops, shouts and laughter ring out across the little room. It takes Edelgard’s attentions away from her taunts. Hubert feels it now as ravenous eyes watch her, unabashed; as his gloved fingers curl into themselves upon the marled wood lest they reach out as they want and take and _take_. It resonates and echoes within the pitiful hollow of his chest until it is a guilty shriek.

Hubert may be a boy raised for another; a weapon, a servant, an aide. But as weapons too dream to be used, so too does Hubert wonder to the allure of possibility. He has long questioned Edelgard’s teases, her soft grins and tinkling laughter that seems reserved only for him, the hallowed invitations to share her bed.

But Hubert has entwined himself to her in more ways than the slick knot of their bodies on warm Enbarr nights. He has plucked up the loose threads of Edelgard’s existence and knotted them tightly to his own. Let her use him as she pleases. To render himself barren and wanting so that she might feel whole would be his greatest pride.

“Von Aegir would not even know where to begin with you,” Hubert says of the matter. Edelgard does not argue.

The night grows long; the liquor flows hot. Outside, snowdrifts thicken and tower.

❧

The stairs creek when they take weight. That is a good sign, Hubert muses; he will know in the middle of the night if they are being approached.

To call their solitary quarters modest would be generous, but it does have a bed, two rickety chairs, and a table that sits unevenly upon the scrubbed wooden flooring beneath. Hubert settles down at it in a decided motion.

It’s thickened between them now, the tension of this singular room. The bed so near whispers to Hubert about the last time he and Edelgard had shared one at her behest; the pretty gasps from her fine, unblemished lips; the scorching trail of her toes along Hubert’s hips and thighs as he had pleasured her. He does not look at it now; he does not think his constitution would be able to handle such torment. Rather, Hubert extracts their map and some unimportant documents. Busywork, until she settles down.

She sits beside him, and they start in on it together. They map a route for the following day; they speculate as to where the accumulation of snow might be at its worst. Hubert glances up every so often to catch a tight quality to the youthful skin beside her mouth. His thoughts do not linger on it.

The spindly arms of his pocket watch creep. Their candle burns low. Hubert talks, and Edelgard’s responses grow cursory.

“The bed is yours,” he tells Edelgard some time into the night. “At your leisure, Empress.”

“Empress,” Edelgard repeats. “I see."

Hubert’s quill has been diligently tracing emerald ink upon their chosen route. He sets it down.

“Is there a problem?”

Edelgard waves a dismissive hand.

Hubert’s brows furrow. He wonders if it is the influence of liquor that has her this way, dissociative and distant, eyes hollow. He wonders next if it is the disagreeable intrusion of an old memory of her time spent in the north, that time he had torn through underbrush and human alike to get to her and had collapsed with nothing but bloodied knees and hands empty. But she had not drank. Edelgard never drinks, not even to warm her on the chilliest of nights. He has learned that along the course of their journey, too.

“Edelgard? What plagues you?”

There are tears shining in her eyes.

“You don’t want to know,” she tells him, and how rapidly has her voice been rendered paper-thin. “You had best not ask, because if you ask, then I will be forced to say, and you will be forced to answer truthfully, because you never lie. Not to me.” She looks up at him, eyes shining violet with the intrusion of sentiment, and something twists deep within Hubert’s chest. “Do you ever simultaneously want not to know and to know something so badly that you bite your tongue bloody?”

He wants to tell her he has, but it is not the case. There are very few things in this world that Hubert fears knowing. Perhaps only one. Perhaps the answer to the question that haunts him the most.

And here she is, devolving in front of him, weary and mussed and blurred at the edges, the very antiphony of his Edelgard. And how desperately it is that Hubert wishes he could comfort her. Lie to her. So that he might be able to assist. How he wishes he could gather her into his arms and keep her warm one last evening so that they both might lie to each other that much longer. 

His gloved hand slides across the table until the tips of his fingers connect to her own. That touch, a greedy, hungry, selfish thing. The most he will allow himself to take.

“You know the most wicked parts of me. It would only be fair if you returned that favor."

A wry laugh escapes her. Those decisive fingers shake as they pull away.

She composes herself, touching at the bottom lashes of her eyes and brushing away her silver hair. Hubert watches as it falls in a fluid line down her little back. He aches with the urge to touch it.

“You told me you loved me,” Edelgard says suddenly, and Hubert’s eyes affix back onto hers. There is shock, ruthless and grating, a cymbal's crashing of it. He watches her take a deep breath, and continue. “You told me the identity of the one you had romantic feelings for was me. And so I asked you into my bed. And so I encouraged you. And yet you remain so distant.” Her voice rises. "Was it a lie, Hubert? Were you placating me? Were you playing a horrible prank? Were you under the impression we might die before I asked you to act out on the feelings you swore to me were real? Or did you just consider me incapable of reciprocating them?”

Her words are flaying. Hubert flinches for the second time that evening. His heart pummels his chest.

“I wouldn’t want.” He licks his lips, and continues—she, the only person he has known to render him so speechless. “To have you feeling—obligated.”

“And if I want to feel obligated?” She asks in return. “And if I want you to be honest with me, no matter the cost?"

They sit as they have for the entirety of their lives; Hubert at Edelgard’s right hand. Backs straight, gazes alert, weapons within arm’s length at their sides, dead smoky tendrils of malcontained Reason coiling about Hubert’s blackened fingertips. Bred together. Raised at one another’s sides. Moulded and sharpened and acclimated through relentless exposure to the iron taste of blood. So that they might take on anything thrown their direction.

“My words were true,” Hubert tells her. Fear like ice threatens to overwhelm him. He is a beast lowered into the frigid confines of a frozen northern lake. He will drown here. He will not make it from the chill.

“I see,” she responds, soft. And then, more decidedly. “Say it.”

His fingers curl into a fist. He cannot breathe. His face has been lit. It burns. There is something wild inside him, clawing at his throat. Desperately as he might try to swallow it back, it does not comply.

“You are the one I love, Edelgard."

Wars. Death. A church, fouled and acid with corruption. Beasts that have tried their damndest to stop them both and failed, been rendered bloody husks in their defeat. Hubert and Edelgard, standing above the felled bodies of their enemies and their pasts and their families. Since the dawn of time there has only been them.

“Prove it,” Edelgard demands in a whisper. And Hubert cannot speak for the taste of his heart in his mouth.

Prove it. Hubert swallows, and stands in an uneasy motion. His fingers work off the fine white gloves that keep his ruinous fingertips snug and tucked away. He casts them onto the table.

Prove it. He steps forward until her knees are at his shins, her order buzzing like static in his ears. As though he has just been clobbered upon the side of his head by the blunt edge of an axe. Perhaps he has.

Prove it. He pulls her to her feet with a demanding, graceless hand about her wrist. His mouth blasts hot hair across her face and lashes. Edelgard is the first to close her eyes.

He’s kissed her before, but they were trivial, gentle things. Formalities at best, motions so that he does not sleep with her without at least affording the Empress the courtesy. When Hubert thinks back to it, he recalls her lips to be velvet, pliant things; her face to be warm. They do not touch when they kiss beyond the peck of lips. Hubert has not tasted her tongue.

Tonight it is different. Tonight, her taunt eggs him on. Hubert’s arms encircle her body and he pulls her against him, tight, until her feet have lifted from the ground. Tonight when he kisses her, it is with an open mouth.

She gasps. Her fingernails pierce the sensitive rear of Hubert’s neck and shoulders. Their tongues collide. And Hubert kisses her as he has dreamt of for so many years, kisses his Empress until neither of them can breathe.

Ruin.

He tastes it on her tongue. He feels it in the burning lines her fingernails rake into his flesh. Hubert’s desire is a beast pitifully and impractically staved off by naught but the slick walls of the pit it has dug for itself; it clambers out, set free.

Even as he burns, her fingers tear at his collar. Even as he makes to breathe, she goes in for another kiss and eagerly takes in his tongue. Hubert’s groan is the sound of a monster. He sheds his shirt.

He presses her spine to the wall at their rear, and they come together again with a rough sound that will certainly be heard the next room over. His erection is an insistent line between his thigh and her middle. He twists her knee about his waist. His want to be closer overtakes him.

“Hubert,” Edelgard asks, and Hubert responds with wet, open lips along her face and neck. “Hubert,” she requests again, and his fingers drip in crimson ribbon as her corset comes apart in his hands.

“Edelgard."

There’s no time for titles, so he grants her none. There is no title worthy of her name, anyway. He whispers it to the fluttering nook of her gentle neck as she eases back her jaw. He speaks it as he has always heard it, a name with his entire future spun into the graceful little syllables, a name to rival that of the Goddess herself.

And how it has. And how Edelgard has taken on the Goddess and dragged victory to her side. And how Hubert loves her for it.

They inhale in unison as the seal between their lips comes undone to find Edelgard against the wall, and Hubert against her, that silver hair sticking to the suede of his vest, her spit trailing down his jaw. They must make the funny pair, Hubert thinks as he reaches to dry it. His Empress, gold; he, her mere shadow. This very act the proof Edelgard had requested of his love.

Oh Goddess, doesn’t he love her enough to ravage her to her satisfaction? Hasn’t he loved her dearly, loved her wickedly, loved her shamefully, each and every day since they were children and his life assigned to her? Hasn’t he tucked her away like a secret deep in the caverns of his empty chest?

His fingers shake as they travel down the length of her face, reverent. He needn’t tell her he love her again. To say those words one more time would be to allow too much of himself escape. Who is he apart from Edelgard? What husk of a man might be terrorizing the earth were he not bestowed unto her like a gift?

“Hubert,” she whispers, eyes shining with more tears unshed. “Take off your clothes and wait for me on the bed."

His things come off uneasily as he turns back to her, shame contained and marginalized as he strips to reveal the worst pieces of himself. His fingers are irritating, fumbling, blackened things; they slip upon his cravat, and the taut buttons at the front of his pants. His belly and thighs are scarred from his own experimentations. His cock is hard and stiff and wanting and shameful. When he is laid bare, he shivers in the frozen air that seeps in from the window.

She approaches him a Goddess in her own right, hair wild, arms scarred, an undershirt covering her breasts and stomach. Hubert does not complain. It would not befit his undeniable luck to object. Let Edelgard come to him as she pleases. He would not turn her away.

He makes to greet her, and she presses him back. The headboard is a cheap, old thing, and it groans a complaint underneath his weight, but Hubert pays it little mind. He pays the humble quarters or tomorrow’s map or the emerald ink drying in his quill which will be positively ruined no further attentions. Edelgard tops his thighs and his world is thrown asunder.

They come together in the shuddering breaths of first-time lovers, in Hubert’s fingers curling in a ruinous strength upon her silk shirt. She rides him, and the perishing candlelight hits her just right. It casts a halo about her silver hair and touches a low graceful acknowledgement across her cheekbones and mouth, and she is made angelic. Hubert’s blackened fingers claw up the length of her back; a beast intent on pulling her down from her spot amongst the heavens.

Her hips roll and he hisses in pleasure. Her arms pull him close and so he goes, until his world is made up of her argent hair and the smell of her sweat. Hubert clings onto her as their pleasures crest, as the space they share is made sticky and hot with their desperation.

Oh, how she has ruined him, how she has saved him. Hubert has been disassembled and reassembled in full. Edelgard plucks up his parts and blows off his dust. She forges him in molten want. She absolves him his sins.

They come down from their peak, and he touches tears upon her cheeks. Her arms link about his neck as sleep takes them, together.

❧

The snows have stopped the following day; the night’s previous chill has left the upper layers of accumulation sharp and crystalline. The hooves of their horses crunch as they make their way back towards the main road. From here, Hubert estimates they have eight days’ further travel before their destination. The thought strikes him with a bitter sensation.

At his front, Edelgard is hooded again, her axe secured tight and innocuous at her horse’s right flank. She bids the mount stop and turns to look at him, a smile at her mouth, steam curling up from her nose.

“Coming, my darling?” She asks, and beckons with a gloved finger. Hubert grins, and nudges his horse in the haunches to quicken the unsatisfactory pace.

His reins feel good underneath his gloves; the conversation will be pleasant. Hubert thinks the feeling of Edelgard’s body upon his from the night prior will keep him warm throughout the frostbitten day and well into the next night, too.

The world is comprised of fickle frosts and curling vapors. The cold is naught but a challenge as it beckons her fire northward.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for your love, your time, and your kind comments. I try to respond to them all even if I am deplorably slow.
> 
> Chat with me on [Twitter!](https://www.twitter.com/iliawrites)


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